Chase the Wind
by thousanth
Summary: After Meteor and Holy, after the end and the beginning, Nanaki no longer knows who he is.


For the prompt: "Red XIII; Character Study - _He is the last_"

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Beneath his feet, the world is turning. Nanaki follows the path of the wind as it wends its way across the planet, running with it through the long grass of the plains and chasing it up through the hidden tracks that weave through the mountains. He follows a dream, and a memory, ever just out of sight.

They tell him that he is the last, that his brothers and sisters are gone, scattered to the winds and the dust of memory. Human memory perhaps, but Nanaki's people are long-lived and their memories stretch as far back as the birth of this world. He does not forget his brothers or his sisters. He remembers the glint in the eye of a long-lost female; a _drinne_, a lost word that no human would ever know. She of the doubting eyes and the fire-flicker tail. In the quiet of the nights he longs for her and wonders where she chose to go.

Since Meteor and Holy, since the end and the beginning, he has travelled this world from coast to coast and back again. He has ridden the waves on garish metal ships and sailed above the clouds on Cid's elegant Lady Luck. Following the wind, following a dream and a memory. But still he is alone.

The humans that he meets upon his journeys rarely understand what he is. Where there is not fear at his presence, at sharp teeth and a tail that might burn their children's hands - he's never set fire to anything with his tail, it simply doesn't work like that! - then there is suspicion. He is no monster, no matter what they might think. And nor is he an animal to be petted and cooed over. The shame of it is sometimes easy to forget if silence will buy him a pass to move on unmolested.

He is no longer what he thought he was. When he was young, he was the fiercest of the Canyon warriors, and he would prove to the world his worth to make up for his father's shame. The insanity of a human turned him into a monster in the eyes of all, and took from him everything he thought he'd ever been worth. Pain and suffering brought him loneliness and grief, and he followed its path because they had planted the seed of rage and revenge inside him, buried deep like a cancer.

All the things he has ever been he has become at the behest of others. Vincent tells him this as they sit together looking out across the Sleeping Forest. _You were young, and had something to prove, so you became a warrior. You were captured and tortured, so you became a monster to save yourself._

_I was never a monster_, Nanaki says.

Vincent shrugs. _We all were_, he replies.

In the Sleeping Forest, it is easy to forget who he is supposed to be. The silence and the emptiness between the great old trees takes his breath away and steals with it all the excuses he has built up for the world to see.

_You became a champion, because that was what the Planet needed. And then a friend because it was the expected thing. We were writing a legend, and you played your part._

_I did what I thought was right_.

_Yes. Everyone did. In the eyes of others we became the heroes that the Planet and her people needed us to be. What are we now? What are you now?_

_I don't know any more,_ Nanaki says.

_You are what others have made of you._

It feels wrong to Nanaki, these bitter words that Vincent speaks. But Vincent Valentine has suffered too, in so many ways. He has loved, lost and sacrificed as much as any of them and underneath the pale skin and dark eyes there's a wisdom born of painful experience that Nanaki cannot deny. He takes his friend's advice, there amongst the silent trees, and goes out into the world to find himself.

_I am not alone_, is the last thing he says before he takes his leave. _You are not alone either. We may be monsters, we may be outcast. But we are outcast together._ Perhaps Vincent smiles behind the folds of that great cloak of his, but Nanaki cannot see his face for the shadows that cloak the human, and so he cannot tell. He leaves his friend behind in the silence of the forest and goes out into the world to rediscover himself.

It took the near death of the Planet to bring him back from the edge, to wake him up to what he could be. And now, when all that is past, all that he has left is all that he has allowed himself to be. He is not who he thought he was, he is what others have made of him. From frightened cub to laboratory experiment to hero - all the way to the fact that he is the last.

This ends now, he tells himself. Along with all the other lies that he has allowed to go unchallenged. No monster, no outcast, no hero. Just Nanaki. And so he goes out into the world, alone save for the friends he takes with him in his heart and memories. He may not know who he is now, but he'll go on searching and keep following the wind with its whispered dreams, and that alone will be what he makes of himself.


End file.
